Saturday 25 February 2012

Two generations, two wars, and two hundred yards

Sylvia, in uniform
Mark and Sylvia live about 200 yards and 60 years apart in Orpington in Kent. But they have one more thing in common.  War.

Sylvia, 88, was in the armed services in World War II.  Mark, 28, a former soldier, served in Afghanistan.

Now they look very different, but their experiences bring them together. 

Mark

Mark joined the Army in 1998 and went on to duty in locations including Afghanistan (Afghan to our forces) and The Falklands.  Mark says that that while the job the Army does is important, "day to day it was the blokes and my own friends that mattered most."  He remembers working in Afghan with the kind of people who, keen to raise money for a colleague who had had an arm and both legs blown off on duty, were sponsored to do 9 marathons in 9 days. He appreciates what the charity Help for Heroes does, but the togetherness of the Army is such that often it helps its own people.


A pop up wall under construction
Mark’s war was in Afghan.  There, aged 23, he worked on a sangar, an Afghan- inspired name for a very small fort, or place for troops to observe and fire from in relative safety. But what if one isn’t safe?  Mark encountered one which lacked a wall to protect soldiers entering and leaving the sangar from a camp.  In fact, sadly a soldier from the Mercian Regiment had just been shot dead for the lack of a wall.  So Mark and his team worked for days to build a wall in full view of the sniping positions that had so recently been used.  Mark is very proud of the achievement:

“Yes, I was nervous, knowing I could be shot at any moment. But I am glad that I have left a legacy which means no more shootings will take place in that spot and soldiers following me to Afghan are safer.”  

“Another time we needed to put in a new heli pad, but extend the base perimeter so the helicopters could land safely. We used a concertina wall – the Hesco Bastian - and after two and a half weeks repetitive slog it was done.  I was the only person in my team that worked on the wall throughout, others being given other duties from time to time.  I knew I’d been working, too.  Every time I returned to camp I had to wring the sweat out of my trousers and socks, and it was a time of shower, sleep, work, repeat.” 

Sylvia

Sylvia was 14 and living in Peckham when she left school to work with her father’s grocery business, which then had a horse and cart for transport, and then a manufacturer of toffee wrappers.  She was 17 when she volunteered for the armed forces in World War II.  She joined the RAF’s Women's Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) in 1941, and learned to drive in a British School of Motoring car before getting a licence to drive larger vehicles.

Her service took Sylvia to Yorkshire's Bomber Command bases, including Dalton, Dishforth, and Topcliff, where her job was to bus airmen to and from their accomodation to their airfields and their bomber aircraft. Their aircraft were Wellington and Lancaster bombers.  As Sylvia later learned, the latter were involved in the famous Dambuster raids on Germany. 

Sylvia recalls, “Sometimes they used to limp back on only one engine or two engines and they would land where they could, so we used to have to go and get the them.  Awful memories.  The airmen in the airplanes and they couldn't get out and the planes were smouldering and going up in flames."


"We used to do night duty, take them out, bring them home to their briefing, and home again.  I had a friend who was on night duty and she was killed, a stray plane came over and shot the airfield up, it was most unusual because normally it was very quiet, we didn’t get much in the way of raids.  In fact, when I came home on leave to Peckham I was glad to get back [to Yorkshire] because it was much quieter up there."
 
"We had a Royal Canadian Airforce squadron on our station and quite a lot of the girls married the pilots and went over to America, didn’t know what they were going to really, but it always seems brighter on the other side.”

Sylvia and Mark don’t know each other.  Perhaps they, and other people like them, should.

Sunday 19 February 2012

Welcome to the Veneratio Charity Blog

Frank Williams at our launch event
Welcome to readers of this blog from Bethany, founder of the new charity Veneratio, which is working to help better integrate older people with society.

By “integrate” we mean simply helping people who have reached what used to be the retirement age of 60 to have more opportunities and more respect from other age groups than is sometimes currently the case.  We believe:

-  That older people, including those who have problems with their health and mobility, are just as valuable and interesting as their younger selves;

-  That older people can be given or create for themselves more opportunities to do positive things with other people of all ages;


-  That it is terrible that many older and retired people are lonely and isolated.  We intend to do all that we can to help them have more things to do and to be able to enjoy the company of others more often;
 

-  That older people can help younger people to realise their dreams and succeed in their lives and careers and that getting the two together is a must.

We launched in October 2011 and are based in Biggin Hill in Kent.  We were honoured to have at our launch the actor Frank Williams, formerly The Reverend from the Dad’s Army TV show.  We are now even more honoured that he is our Patron. 

As 2012 begins, we have delivered a number of local events for elderly people and I have been out and about in homes and hospitals talking with local older people.  


My colleague Darren has been interviewing a local lady of 88 years of age, Sylvia, about her experiences which include her fathers grocery business which was using horse and cart when she was a young girl; working in RAF transport taking WWII bomber crew to and from their aircraft; and later running a catering business and meeting some rich and famous people.  Her memories will appear in this blog at a later date.  Finally (for now) on Saturday 25th February at the Priory School in Orpington, between 1 and 4pm, we will have our first Age Exchange event, held in partnership with the  Bromley Community Engagement Forum, to entertain and engage both local young and older people, and where we have professional musicians aged 20 and 74 years old playing.

We have much to look forward to.  We’re determined to make a difference.  If you would like to get in touch, to help us or donate some money to help us do more, visit our website www.veneratio.org.uk

Bethany Russell, Founder, Veneratio